PREM: West Ham v Arsenal preview

West Ham v Arsenal preview

Arsenal welcome back a host of injured players as they make the trip across London to play West Ham in the Premier League.

Mesut Ozil, Laurent Koscielny, Hector Bellerin, Nacho Monreal, Shkodran Mustafi and Konstantinos Mavropanos are all back in full training and under consideration for the weekend.

It will be welcome news for Unai Emery as they look for an away win, but the manager is aware of the tough task at hand.

"I think they [West Ham] are improving and they also have good individual players with quality, like Anderson, like Arnautovic - who are very good players," he said.

"They are playing at home with their supporters and that's difficult for us. Each away match is a very big challenge for us to find consistency and progression with our way. Saturday is a new challenge. We are very [convinced] to play and to give big work in finding our victory."

West Ham manager Manuel Pellegrini has hinted that Samir Nasri could be in line to make his Premier League debut against his former club after the 31-year-old played 58 minutes of West Ham's 2-0 FA Cup third round win against Birmingham.

He said: "I think it was very useful for him to play 60 minutes in the FA Cup. He has been working hard for around 40 days and he has demonstrated he is able to be involved against Arsenal, at least in the squad list."

Nasri is set for his first Premier League appearance since August 2016, but West Ham's injury list remains long. Winston Reid (knee), Jack Wilshere, Ryan Fredericks (both ankle), Fabian Balbuena, Manuel Lanzini, Carlos Sanchez (all knee) and Andriy Yarmolenko (Achilles) are all missing.

Marko Arnautovic - whose brother claims he wants to leave West Ham - should play, despite his early substitution in the FA Cup and current transfer speculation.

Emery has options in defence with Koscienly, Bellerin, Mustafi and Monreal available after injuries.

However, Danny Welbeck and Rob Holding remain on the sidelines.